


Return to Sender

by thetalkingcrocus



Category: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Genre: Angst, Love Letters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 17:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14502354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetalkingcrocus/pseuds/thetalkingcrocus
Summary: After his release, Harding makes some inquiries.





	Return to Sender

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my tumblr September 2 2013.

You had known that Mack wasn’t coming back. You had known it deep down, had felt a shattering loss grip you, soul deep, flickering black flames under your ribcage like your heart had combusted. You woke up from a nightmare, drenched in cold sweat with your pretty wife asleep, facing away from you, and you knew, but you wrote anyway.

 

“Dear McMurphy,

 

My friend, I hope all is well for you. As you no doubt have been informed, if you are receiving this letter, I checked myself out of the ward. The Nurse didn’t even protest. She’s hardly what she used to be, thanks to your efforts. I would like very much to hear from you and know that you are alright. Please write back when you have the time, and perhaps we can convince someone to get me on an authorized visitor list and I can come see you.

 

Kind regards,

 

Dale Harding”

 

You sealed it into an off white envelope, your curly writing adorning the front, and you waited, You waited and bid your time and applied for jobs and avoided your wife, and politely ignored the smell of other men that she brought home with her some nights- after all, you weren’t much better.

 

You received no response, and so, naturally, though your stomach was sinking lower and lower, you tried again.

 

“Dear McMurphy,

 

How are things on the inside? I am still awaiting a response for you, perhaps my previous correspondence has gotten misplaced, or else they’re rationing stamps like they rationed cigarettes. I will bring you some when I come visit, you can be sure. I hope you’re alright; I have to admit, I miss our sessions of banter more than I ever could have guessed.

 

Your friend,

 

Dale Harding”

 

You wrote again, and again, until pretences and attempts to diffuse your worry with humor were no more, until you scribbled with enough rage to tear pages, until your farewells and signoffs started with the word “yours”, until the word “love” was somewhere in the text of the letter, until you had blisters on your fingers from the grip of the pen. You sent each one, each goddamned one with “Randle P. McMurphy” on the name of recipient line, writing with the fountain pen you had gotten from your mother when you graduated from college.

 

You were on the brink of going to the hospital yourself to demand answers, from the nurses if you could get to the ward, or from Mrs. Bibbit, if she had returned to work after her leave of absence, when you received a box.

 

It was a box. Plain, brown, wrapped in brown paper like at the butcher’s, and you felt as though your very heart were being wrapped in butcher’s paper, to be sliced and sold. It was tied with string in some lewd semblance of a present, and its return address was the ward of the hospital, and that paper wrapped heart fluttered momentarily until you realize that there is no name above the address. You open it with graceful hands trembling, afraid.

 

The box is full of your sealed letters, each marked with “RETURN TO SENDER” in crisp red ink, from a stamp pad you know the Big Nurse kept in her office. A letter sits atop yours, not in an envelope, just crisp typewriter paper, informing Harding that McMurphy was dead, and because there was no available next of kin, the box also contained some of the personal effects Mack had brought with him to the hospital. You were shaking hard now, tears dropping off of your face and onto the paper, and your stomach was flip flopping, and you were hoping it was some sort of cruel joke, but sure enough there was his thick leather jacket- the work clothes, you suspected, had gone back to the farm, but the motorcycle cap, and the jacket, and those damned whale boxers, those were all there, along with his wallet (which had playing cards embossed on the dark leather) and his pack of playing cards, well thumbed through Your lips quirked up in an involuntary grin, and you carried the box to your study with tears still adorning your pale cheeks.

 

Vera didn’t even ask where you’d gotten the new jacket. It was ill fitting and far removed from your usual style, but you wore it anyway, and especially so when you’d reread the letters you wrote, in their envelopes. Return to sender. They would never reach their destination. You hid inside the jacket and inside yourself, let it fall over your dancing fingertips and hang loose over your thin shoulders.

 

It still smelled like him.


End file.
